I think 2016 would be a great year to update some of the issues. Iran could become “Iran nuke deal,” energy could be the “Keystone XL Pipeline,” Unions could become “minimum wage,” education could become “college tuition” free trade could become “TPP,” etc. Just to make it more current

I don’t know about Steven’s suggestions since they replace a broader issue with a specific instance (although free trade becoming TPP is a good idea: not so much lost there). I do believe that race relations or BLM specifically should be included since it’s getting a fair amount of news coverage and was even a question in one of the debates.

Is it intentional that organizational strength built during the primaries doesn’t carry over to the General? Like if I max it out in a state in the primary, once I switch to the primary, it goes back to where it was but if I were to try to build it up again, it says that I am already at max. But if I didn’t do it in the primary, I can build it up in the general just fine.

@Jonathan With Christie it is a little harder to say whether scandals like Bridgegate have actually harmed him. Bush is about the same place in the polls now and occupies the same wing of the party without much for scandals. Might have more to do with outside forces like having too many “establishment governor” types and having Trump in the race.

True on Christie, but polls definitely show that her scandals have negatively impacted her at least slightly among independents. I don’t see why a 3 is not warranted. Especially since no one has above a 3, meaning they’re not ridiculously corrupt.

If so, I think it’s debatable whether she should have a 2 or 3. Between the private server and classified information and the foundation issues, I think a case can be made for a 2. This sounds like something to put to the Steering Council.

Corruption is meant to apply to a candidate’s organization or party more than themselves. H. Clinton’s problem doesn’t seem to be organizational corruption, but questions about her honesty and integrity. I think if a change is made, it would make more sense to decrease her Integrity.

Also Trump has been mentioning a possible 3rd party run. Apparently, 69% of his supporters would follow him. That would certainly send Clinton to the White House, since it would drain votes from one party only. Any chance you could make a Trump independent candidate?

Trump’s gaffe’s shouldn’t really be gaffes but they should add to his momentum in the primary but hurt him in the general… not sure how you could add that kind of thing but basically that’s what happening to Trump (you can see this in the polls he is almost always the worst Republican against Hillary even though he is surging in the primary)

I think Sanders’ charisma value of 2 is definitely too low. While he may not be the prettiest candidate he often gets huge crowds and his supporters adore him. Also, Clinton’s integrity should be a two. Regardless of what anyone thinks about her, it’s the perception that counts in an election. Therefore, the fact that a significant majority of Americans think she is dishonest should be considered: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/08/27/clinton-hits-lows-on-favorability-trustworthiness-in-poll/

@Arnaud, that’s an old news blog. Her favorability has increased following her 11-hour defense. Sanders charisma can arguably be a two, because Socialism isn’t going to appeal, unfortunately, to 60% of Americans.

The Steering Council is currently voting on whether Clinton’s Integrity should be a 2 or 3. I will carefully look at their feedback and the vote results (as well as anyone else’s feedback) in deciding whether to keep it at 3 or move it to 2. If the game allowed for decimals in attributes, I would put it at 2.5, say.

Ah, I didn’t realize the difference between campaign corruption and integrity, but then shouldn’t Christie’s integrity be lower and not campaign corruption? A lower value (probably 2) for integrity on Hillary might be ok, but I haven’t looked into her stats since you clarified the difference.

My understanding is that the major scandal with Christie has to do with people in his administration, which would be, directly, corruption. Indirectly, it suggests integrity, but that’s more difficult to know.

Yes, but do you believe that Trump is actually limited by that? He is not running around the country holding fundraisers like most candidates, and there’s a good reason for it – if he got into an ads war, he could fairly easily donate millions of dollars to his own campaign – or do you disagree?

@Anthony – Oh no I agree, but you also used realistic numbers for Mitt Romney who could have self funded (not to the same extent, he wasn’t a billionaire.) Romney did partially self-fund in 2008, and in 2012 largely avoided it.

Also didn’t mean that aggressively, just keep in mind that he may ultimately not throw much in. A lot of his contributions are in-kind donations to himself or paying for use of his corporate materials (helicopter, plane).

He might not, but the question is what should the player have access to. My sense is that Trump easily could and very well may put significant amounts of money into his campaign. Therefore, his starting funds is set at about $30M right now.

Reasons for modifying Clinton’s Integrity numbers. 1. The scandals (server, foundation, Benghazi) that have been following Clinton suggest there are things Clinton has done which allowed for these scandals to occur. This in turn suggests that the game ought to make it easier for scandals to occur on Clinton. In terms of game mechanics, it makes sense. 2. Public sentiment seems to be that Clinton’s honesty or integrity is low. 3. It does not seem to be a purely partisan issue – people from both parties and independents question her honesty and integrity.

Given all this, I’m shifting her Integrity from 3 (Average) to 2 (Below Average).

@Anthony
Yeah, I think Trump should be 5 in Spin. I hadn’t thought of that.

@Everyone else
If anyone is curious about what the map might look like with a Trump independent run, I’ve added a new scenario. I’ve included Anthony’s reduction of Clinton’s integrity to 2 (although, I disagree with the change). Carson has also mentioned the possibility of leaving the Republican Party. Hopefully, both candidates will be added as 3rd party options, but until then, my scenario is with the downloadable campaigns.

Should Trump and Carson threatening to leave be an event? Also, I don’t remember if I saw any events regarding Bernie Sanders. I wonder if there is something that could be added that would give him the boost he received a few months back.

Don’t know how those would be modeled. They are also internal to a campaign, so not the best fit for 2016’s scripted events. What would be interesting would be to have ‘threaten to run independent’ and ‘run independent’ functionality, but for this to make sense would require the party itself is able to do things against a candidate, and where the threat would decrease the likelihood, or some such thing.

Probably negative events for Clinton, such as the revelations about the server. Suggestions welcome.

Is there a fix in the works for candidates that have dropped out of the race not having ads run against them and not having them polling in states still? This is what causes a lot of the swings from polling to result in the primary. If, for example, Trump and Jeb are the only two left in the race: Trump can have 30% and Jeb has 15%. Then Jeb wins 55%-45% because all the candidates that dropped out had a collective 30% then plus the undecideds. So you have to attack the guy that dropped out in order to move their numbers over to you before the primary date.

@anthony What it looks like is that when a candidate drops out, the game freezes that player from doing anything else. But, as far as the other candidates are concerned, they are still “in the race” just not doing anything.

I added Syrian refugees and minimum wage as issues in my custom version- it did not have a real big impact on the results but it did push most Republican candidates a bit more to the right. I imagine whenever the favorability feature comes out adding these two issues would have a greater impact.

I just added them without subtracting any. Like I said no major election result impact but it did change some campaign platform distances (especially Trump because he is far-right on Syrian refugees and right on minimum wage so it pushed him .2 further right overall)

A couple quick comments about this game. Of the dozen, or so times I have played; I can win regardless of the candidate, or opponent, but just can’t seem to win the first 4 primaries/caucuses. My Thoughts: I create a wall at the Super Tuesday states, and no one can catch me after that. Is it possible to add a 4th difficulty setting? Maybe “insanely” difficult? The first 4-5 months everybody just visits the first 4-5 states. Nobody visits the other states more than 3 times.

In real life, no one wins Iowa, or New Hampshire, really. Their opponents just lose them. While playing as a republican (pick a candidate). Opponent: Cruz spent what seemed like 3 months in Iowa, NH and SC. 1 on 1 he won all of them. The day after each win, I just spin/spun the story, of his win, and he never caught fire. I spent my time in the super Tuesday states and he would concede before the end of March. This works with a crowded field too. My Thoughts: Change the news-story. Everyone gets tagged with -7 momentum (maybe more), after the Iowa Caucus; the only one spared is the winner (maybe the second place finisher).

Trump v Sanders, Clinton v Bush, I have given my opponent a boat load of cash and no primary opponents… this is my way of making it harder for me. My opponent has won their primary, surprised? You shouldn’t be. They now have 120 million dollars, and have selected their running mate. Problem: 2 out of 3 times my opponent opted for the block grant in lieu of their current funds. This knocked one opponent who had at least 140 million down to 70-75 million. The other time they went from 120 down to 70-75 million. This also prevented their fundraising. That seems asinine. One that same note: My opponents ended with 35-50 million cash on hand. I never have more than a million tops. Is this a flaw, or done by design?

Curious to know if you might consider increasing the number of barnstorming visits allowed to a state, while decreasing the effect of each visit. I feel like this would more accurately mimic two dynamics.

1. TV reaches more people than a campaign stop. This might not necessarily be true in retail politicking states like Iowa or New Hampshire (maybe more people see Ted Cruz’s ads during the Iowa-Iowa State game, but a campaign stop could swing as many or more votes than the ad). In large states, however, TV will almost invariably have a greater effect than campaigning. The only time a campaign stop’s impact can rival that of a statewide TV spot in places like Florida is when the stop is a megarally in Orlando or Miami. As a general rule, TV is king in large states when candidates can only make a few stops.

2. Candidates make more than 5-10 stops a year in some states. We’ve seen this in Iowa (Cruz ’16, Santorum ’12), and we’ve seen it in New Hampshire (Bush, Kasich, Christie ’16, McCain ’08 or ’00). For better or worse, some candidates will choose a state, decide “this is where I dig the ditch I’m gonna die in,” and practically move to Iowa or New Hampshire for the 6 months before votes are cast. I remember seeing a few days ago that Chris Christie has made more than 50 appearances in New Hampshire, and it obviously isn’t hurting his standing there, as it would in the game.

I love this game, but this has long been one of my pet peeves, mostly due to point #2. I can understand why you’d create a limit, given the power barnstorming can have, and yet still I favor reducing the power of barnstorming and increasing the cap.

Firstly, this would deprive casual candidates of a meaningful boost from their campaigning. The reason a lot of his allies are dinging Marco Rubio for his less energetic approach to the early states is because they worry 50 days may not be enough time to play catch-up. In-game, a week can accomplish this end, which – especially when paired with the wild election day swings that other players have detailed – discourages a more sustained effort in Iowa or New Hampshire.

This would also make the cost of barnstorming a lot in a state more closely reflect the reality, which is that camping out in Iowa or New Hampshire requires a LOT of time. If the in-game equivalent of 50 appearances or a “full Grassley” ends up costing a candidate a combined 30+ CP and 500 energy points, the tradeoff between raising money in New York or touring the March 1st states and really digging in in IA or NH will be more real. As things stand, though I haven’t tracked the exact limit, it seems like the most CP (a proxy for time) and energy a candidate can put into a state before incurring penalties is something like 10 CP and 100 energy points (I assume you know the precise figures).

I realize there are a lot of changes on the list of suggestions from this community, but it’s my hope that this one would be fairly easy to make (tweaking the impact of barnstorming and the maximum number of visits would do the trick, this software simpleton thinks), and would result in an even better game than the excellent current version.

Just to clarify, when I say “TV reaches more people than a campaign stop” above, I’m a little skeptical of a very specific game dynamic: When you have some momentum, one stop in Florida can boost momentum by 5-10 points, and thus 2 stops in a week (to stave off a loss of momentum after a few days) will have the same effect as a weeklong run of ads costing several million dollars. IMO this doesn’t mimic real life all that closely.

On Rallies. The first number is the rally power. The second number is, what, attendance? if so, then why do I so frequently get negative attendance at a rally? Like how can less than 0 people be at an event?

I can see the logic behind boiling down an event’s reach and media coverage to a single number.

I do feel the voter/media fatigue effect could be curtailed a little, so the issue is one of diminishing returns – a candidate’s first visit might have a power of 7, his 12th a power of 3 or 4 – rather than a visit being genuinely harmful. With the game in its current form, I’ll usually reach a point where barnstorming in Iowa or NH has a power of -1, -3, or worse. This creates a de facto cap on barnstorming – although I could, in theory, visit Iowa 100 times, there’s no reason to do so when everything after the first ~10 events will actually harm my numbers.

Sorry to use Chris Christie as an example again, but I think he’s a fairly good example. Right now, he’s rising in the NH polls because he’s spent over 50 days in the state, and that’s generating positive media coverage. According to your theory of the case – which I agree with – there won’t be as many “Christie rising in New Hampshire” stories in a month’s time, and his town halls will involve more preaching to the choir and reach fewer new voters. With that said, his appearances still get an article in the local papers and expand his base of supporters some with each visit. Hardly a negative effect on his momentum.

TL;DR – I see your reasoning, and I could live with no changes save a tweak or two to make sure barnstorming never actively harms a candidate’s standing. Maybe just set a minimum value of 1 or 2 for a barnstorming event’s power?

Thanks for this feedback – the negative numbers do not represent an event causing negative momentum. It sounds like it’s a bug – the lower limit should be 0. I’ve noted this.

I agree about slowly decreasing Barnstorming effectiveness, and then having it replenished over time, like in Fundraising, and that’s something I want to change.

I think it’s arguable whether a Barnstorming should have a lower limit of 0 or 1. The truth is, sometimes candidates Barnstorming don’t create any discernible positive momentum, and it doesn’t matter how many times they frequent the state. Christie is obviously not in this camp.

I’ll just note, finally, that when I say “negative momentum,” what I mean is that the momentum as shown by the barnstorming details – which appears when scheduling the event – is negative. I’ve never actually kept such an event on the schedule and experienced a decrease in momentum as a result.

I’ll see if I can do so, just as a test, which will show whether the negative power of these rallies actually means negative momentum, or is merely a visual issue. Will post results here when I have them.

So far, several struggling campaigns have “shaken up” their campaign staffs (recently, Carson). How are campaign staffs represented in-game (other than the player being the chief of staff), how would a shakeup be reflected, and what effect would it have? I presume campaign infrastructure is that screen with spin, ads, research, ground, etc.

A few things to note, it seems as if more Super Pacs have alligned with Cruz recently. Here is a list of Super Pacs and who they support https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php
Also Cruz and Carson both brought in somewhere around 20 million dollars in campaign fundraising, so you might consider raising their fundraising strength. Also, I have seen/heard several strategists say that Cruz has a far stretching ground game, could this increase his strategic/command strength? Also, with Carson losing a few of his top staffers, could this impact his organizational strength? Also Cruz has a low experience rating, he does have a lot more experience then people give him credit for, http://www.redstate.com/2015/03/26/ted-cruz-previous-experience-predictors-success/
Also, recent articles and analysis of polling data shows Trump supporters are more likely to vote in a general election, than in a prmary election, I’m not quite sure how to show that in the game if that is true.

I agree completely. Running out of money is the primary reason candidates drop out; weak poll numbers is the second. The thing is, candidates in the game can run down their coffers and then raise a ton of money in one fundraiser, so the cutoff would have to be “cash_on_hand < X" and "fundraising_potential < Y".

Any way that an online multiplayer function could or would be implemented? AI sometimes just do things that well humans wouldn’t. Like in Huntsman in 2012 campaigning heavily in Iowa instead of New Hampshire. Love the games just figured that would make the game more re-playable.

First things first, I know, but do you have a plan for how you’re going to handle winner-take-all by Congressional district? Right now, there’s only statewide FPP and PR. The way i can think of would be to introduce ridings from the other games.

@Jeff Yep, I intended to say that. I sometimes forget people can’t read my mind. It’s the only poll we have had there for a while, and in my opinion, would justify putting HRC back up in Utah over Sanders.

Is there any way you could model how the recent Republican debate was set up?(if a candidate was in the top 5 in New Hampshire or Iowa, then they could get in even if they were not in the top 6 nationally)

@Dallas There are MANY endorsers that should be assigned, but that one happens too late. (Though an argument could be made on whether or not to change the stating progress towards that particular endorsement should change.) For example though, many endorsers should be assigned by the January 1st date. For example, Sen. Gardner endorsed Rubio. On the other side, the vast majority of endorsers should already have endorsed Clinton by the January 1st start date.

Yes, it could be added. The question is whether adding that functionality is the best use of time. I think having a % threshold and max. candidates number is pretty good. The criteria are set by the news companies as the debate approaches, and are context-dependent, so it’s not even clear what they would be like with different candidates and %s.